


this aching in my soul won't fade away

by Anonymous



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Adult Losers Club (IT), Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Introspection, Masturbation, Mentioned Losers Club (IT), Multi, Pining, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Polyamorous Losers Club (IT), Porn with Feelings, Smut, Sort of if you squint - Freeform, mike hanlon loves his friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 22:20:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29232918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: It's not what he needs, but it's the best he's got.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Mike Hanlon/Ben Hanscom/Eddie Kaspbrak/Beverly Marsh/Richie Tozier/Stanley Uris, Mike Hanlon & The Losers Club
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21
Collections: Clowntown Kink Meme 2021





	this aching in my soul won't fade away

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by Anonymous in the [clowntown2021](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/clowntown2021) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Mike in the 27 years between, missing his friends, horny, and unbearably lonely, gets in the habit of humping his body pillow and pretending it’s his friends.
> 
> (Can be any endgame ship or none at all up to you)

There’s a part of him that always knew he’d be the last one left. He could feel it sometimes...the way the world was moving around him. His friends would be growing older and drifting out of Derry like tumbleweeds on the wind, while he stayed moored in the earth. His roots planting him deeper and deeper into the blood soaked soil of their hometown. 

They never wanted to go, especially not once they started to realize what happened when you crossed the town line. He remembers sitting with Ben in the library and putting two and two together after Bill swore he’d call and never did. Leaving Derry meant forgetting Derry, and it was terrifying in a lot of ways. Terrifying because they’d only ever had each other. 

Then there was the icy fear in the pit of his stomach, growing with each car he waved a forlorn goodbye to. If he really was going to be the last one left, then he’d also be the _only_ one. The only Loser who’d remember, who’d know what the scar on the palm of his hand meant. He’d be the one that had to sit every day in a town that hated him for the color of his skin, waiting for something horrible to happen. Not to stop it. He’d be too late to stop it. 

He’s a witness. Plain and simple. A bookmark holding the page open and waiting for the reader to come back. 

It’s...difficult. Far more difficult than he’d thought it’d be. Though if you asked him whether he preferred the watching to the waiting he couldn’t even begin to tell you. They both hurt equally in their own ways. 

Waiting is an ache in the pit of his stomach. The sludge of fear growing stagnant like a long abandoned pool covered in algae. It twists him up, turns him inside out, makes him feel like he’s going to go mad as the seconds turn to minutes, turn to hours, and on and on until one year bleeds into another. He tries his best to spend his time gathering information. Learning as much as he can about the history of Derry, the history of IT. He wants- no, he _needs_ the distraction. Needs it to keep him sane as he dreams of burning hands grasping at doors and yellow eyes glinting from every sewer drain he passes. 

Watching is an ache in the center of his chest. It feels like dying. His hands shake when he picks up Bill’s first published novel, trembling as he tries so desperately to hear his friend’s voice in the pages. He reads about Beverly in a fashion magazine and leaves tear stains on the glossy picture of her smile. He frames the article of Ben’s first building project and hangs it in his office. He watches clips of Richie’s shows, his interviews, eating up anything he can get his hands on like he’ll starve without it. He calls Stan’s office when he starts his own accounting business, just to hear his voice, before hanging up again. He does the same for Eddie, never saying a word, just basking in the sound of him. 

It hurts. 

Radiating out from the center of him, throbbing in his veins and making him feel like he’s drowning no matter how many desperate breaths he takes. He almost caves a hundred times. When the pain intensifies and his endless research leaves him standing with a hand over the phone, trembling with the force of his need. 

What harm would it do to call them back early? Who would it hurt to remind them that he’s here, that he loves them unconditionally? 

In the end he pulls his hand away and clenches it into a fist. He’ll dig up the photographs of their time together, stand in the barrens breathing the summer air, or at the edge of the quarry listening for the echo of their faded voices. He’ll look them up online or pull out one of Bill’s books- anything to fill the hole in the center of his chest that’s shaped like six very distinct people. 

They’re happy. Or at least that’s what he tells himself anyway. It’s how he stops himself from making that call too soon. He catalogs each success with all the bubbling pride of a mother and does his best not to feel every failure like a punch to the gut. 

Richie’s stint in rehab is the closest he comes to breaking. Seeing the pictures makes him feel like his world is teetering on its axis. He leans against his desk and prays to a God he hasn’t believed in since that summer back in 89. 

For a moment he can’t do anything except let the waves of memory pass over him. Richie showing off his braces for the first time. Richie falling over in a fit of giggles because _Mike_ had said something funny. Richie following behind him mimicking the animals in near-perfect cadence while he’d finished up his chores. 

Mike telling Richie he understood what it felt like to be judged for something you were. 

Drowning in his own past, until he found himself parked at the town line with no memory of packing his bags or driving his car. It was like he’d been possessed. Like the spirit of thirteen year old Mike Hanlon had slipped out of the very back edges of his consciousness only to have whatever force was keeping him in Derry slam the gate shut in his face. 

It hurts, turning the car back to the center of town. 

Hurts even more when that singular event causes spindly cracks to spread across the idealistic vision he’d had of his friend’s lives. He can’t know for sure, but he wonders. Maybe their lives aren’t as picture perfect and happy as they seem from the outside? 

He tries not to look too closely at their lives after that. Puts some distance between himself and the heartache in his chest. 

It never works out for very long. 

Loneliness has always been too big a feeling to ignore. It’s manageable when it feels like the size of his apartment, stifling but contained in the four walls of his home. But some days that loneliness has grown and spread until it’s the size of Derry itself. Even Mike, with all his years of practice being alone, can’t possibly carry the weight of it. 

Days like today he can’t really bring himself to get out of bed. The air above him feels weighted down and thick. Not just with the heat of summer that’s seeping in from the outside, but with what feels like the entire universe curled up on his chest like a cat. 

He’s taken to avoiding his bed most nights for this reason. Either sleeping in the chair by his desk or on the couch in the living room. The bed feels dangerous somehow. Comforting but loud in its reminders that he’s alone. 

And the irony is...the person he’s missing is always different. 

His hand will reach out to grasp at the cold, empty space beside him, and his voice will call out a name. He doesn’t know which one it is until it’s slipping out of him. It can be any one of them. The Losers. His friends, his family, the people he loves with every ounce of his heart. His eyes will open and for a moment he’ll see...not them, not quite. An image of them made up of tabloid pictures and old memories, trying to piece together what a sleepy smile and tousled hair might look like on faces he hasn’t had the chance of seeing in person. 

He groans, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes hard enough to hurt. He’s tired. Tired on a level so deep he’s not sure he’ll ever feel rested again. It feels like a certain kind of emptiness. Like an ache in the pit of his stomach, a tight clenching in his chest. 

It’s not what he needs. He knows that, even as his hand is clenching around one of his pillows and dragging it half under his body. It’s just the only way he’s ever been able to make the loneliness shrink back down to something he can work around. It’s a _release_. A way to work the tension out of his body and make his mind go blissfully blank for just a few moments. Like rebooting a computer. 

With a sigh, he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers and shimmies them down his hips. A few kicks and they’re on the floor, but he takes a moment to just lay still again. His eyes focused on the ceiling, legs slightly splayed, soft cock twitching in the exposed air. A moment of, “Are we really doing this?” before he’s sucking in a breath and reaching down between his legs. 

If he tilts his head just right and lets his gaze drop a little, he can see them. The wall of pictures and articles he’s hung up by his desk like a shrine to their accomplishments. It’s not excessive...at least he doesn’t think it is. One or two things from each of them. Just enough to remind him that they existed. That once upon a time he had people in his life so important they’d become the definition of everything. 

His hand is dry and rough, unpleasant. He strokes once, tugging at himself, before bringing it back up to lick at his palm. When he reaches for himself again it doesn’t exactly feel good...but it’s better. Good enough for his jaw to clench around a moan as his hand works up and down the length of his shaft. 

There’d come a point in his life where he’d stopped doing it like this. Yeah, occasionally, he still jerked off with his hand especially in the shower, but for the most part it just didn’t feel satisfying anymore. He didn’t consider his cock to be particularly long, but it was thick. Once it filled out enough, getting a comfortable grip on it (even with hands as big as his ) wasn’t as satisfying as it used to be when he’d been a teenager. 

That, or he just didn’t like handjobs in general. Considering he had a limited subject pool to build off of the jury was still out on that one. 

It’s Sunday, the library doesn’t open, so he’s got time. Eyes only half focused on the wall, as he drags his palm in slow, lazy strokes. There’s nowhere to be, no one he needs to see today. It makes that ache in his chest constrict a little tighter, but that’s fine. 

He sighs as his cock fills out against his palm, precum beading at the tip. His thumb swipes at it, spreading it around the head, and letting out a small hiss each time he grazes across the slit. He works at himself just long enough to get worked up, dragging it out by taking his time with it. 

There’s always a small kernel of hesitation when he does this. A sense of needing to get it over with as quickly as possible so he could pocket the shame and move on. Layover from all those mornings spent in church and listening to his grandfather lecture about the bible. He always ignores that feeling. He doesn’t want to be ashamed of this. Of his body needing some kind of release. 

Should he feel ashamed that he does it looking at pictures of his grown-up friends from middle school? Possibly. 

Then again. He’d happily jerk off to a magazine or a video if he could find literally anything else that gave him a feeling as strong as what he got from thinking about the Losers. That was the real problem. Being in Derry was like being anesthetized. Everything was numb and gray. The people, the buildings, the air itself. He had to take any sort of feeling- good or bad, from where he could. 

Sitting up he tugged the pillow out from under him and shifted himself to his knees at the center of the bed. The pillow was warm from his body, maybe not enough to equal a person, but better than it being cold. Folding it in half he pressed down on the sides as he rutted his hips forward. His cock grazing the outer corner and dragging a groan from the depths of his throat. 

He didn’t want to lose that heat so he didn’t waste much time. Slipping into the crease and clenching down to give himself some pressure. It felt good. The fabric was smooth with just enough texture to give each drag a little resistance. 

It was a good start. One hand braced against the bed, the other holding the folded pillow closed over his cock, while his hips found a rhythm. When he finally let his eyes slip closed it was almost impossible to keep his mind from going where it wanted to go. Wandering to that same image that plagued him every morning he rolled over in bed. The sleep rumpled faces of his friends smiling at him, their hands reaching out to him. 

He moans, head bowing forward, a muffled “Fuck” echoing against the walls around him. The images in his head hold him close or kiss him. Bill climbs on top of him and lays against his chest pressing kisses to his heart. Bev does the same but stradling just his lap, her fingertips dancing across his skin as light as butterflies. Ben holds him from behind, arms around his waist, and lips dotting kisses across his shoulders. Richie cups his face, cradling his jaw and drawing him into a kiss that makes his toes curl and his throat hum. Stan tangles their legs together and kisses the knuckles of his hands. Eddie tucks himself against his chest, traces his jaw with the tip of his nose and smiles warm and tender against his neck. 

He loves them. He loves them so much it feels like he’ll burst with it. 

His thrusts are growing more erratic, desperation climbing up his spine like a ladder. He shifts the pillow so it’s laying flat against the bed and straddles it. The heat in the pit of his stomach is a boiling pot ready to overflow and he’s throwing all his loneliness, all his aching, into the very heat of it. 

There’s no one to hear him so he lets himself cry out, lets his moans rise and echo in the room around him, until it feels like he’s not alone anymore. Willing the sounds to multiply until there’s seven of them rising to that peak together. 

When he comes it’s with a sob that rips itself out of his chest. His body spasms with each ribbon that streaks across the pillow beneath him until his body gives out and he collapses onto his chest. 

The muscles beneath his skin twitch with the aftershocks. He knows he’s going to hate the fact that he’s laying in his own come later, but for the moment he feels content. Mind blissfully blank, the constricting sensation in his chest unlocked and uncoiled. He can’t help but suck in a breath of air like he’s coming up from underwater, eyes only half focused on the wall across the room. 

He loves them. That’s enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope this is at least remotely close to what you wanted! 
> 
> anyone's welcome to talk to me on twitter if you like @drakarifire


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